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Glenn's Show Prep

Dear Netflix, Why Is Racism Against White People Okay?

February 09, 2017
Staff

WRITER

How can you tell if something is racist?

"An easy way to figure out if you're saying something racist is change the colors and see if it feels racist," Co-host Stu Burguiere said Thursday on The Glenn Beck Program.

Maybe Netflix should have followed that simple rule before before releasing the trailer for its new show Dear White People.

"If it was Dear Black People, and it was teaching lessons to black people who don't understand the real world the way white people do, that would be an issue," Stu said.

Listen to this segment from The Glenn Beck Program:

PAT: Dear white people, you're evil, and you need to go. That's what I expect this is about, but I don't know that for a fact. I just know that a TV show called Dear Black People probably wouldn't go over that well.

STU: Hmm. Wow.

PAT: Dear Hispanics, Dear Asian People. Why is this okay?

STU: You know, I don't know. I was watching CNN, I believe, yesterday. And they had an African-American guest on. And he was -- I think at least believed himself to be a comedian. I don't know that he actually was.

PAT: Okay.

STU: And he apparently does some show for -- for CNN. And as they were talking about Trump, they -- they said, "Well, we've got a lot to cover today in the news." And he said, "Yeah, we have a lot of white people we got to look out for." I was curious to see how CNN would react if one of their white guests were to say, "Yeah, I know we got a lot of black people we need to look out for." That would be an interesting moment in television history.

PAT: They would be done. It sure would. If they worked for CNN, that would be their last statement on CNN. That would be it.

STU: And people are like, "Well, it's different." An easy way to figure out if you're saying something racist is change the colors and see if it feels racist.

PAT: Yes.

STU: And, you know, if you're saying something like I don't know, all these typical white people who have just this bred into them. If you were to change the wording on that, you would probably have some issues in society.

PAT: Typical black people who have something bred into them. Yes.

STU: You would have issues in society.

PAT: Which is why somebody -- oh, Glenn Beck questioned whether or not there were some issues there.

STU: Right. And that's just a good guideline for everybody. The idea of racism, you shouldn't be generalizing.

PAT: Yeah.

STU: You shouldn't be disparaging. There's no reason for it.

PAT: Well, do you remember Jimmy "The Greek," his generalizations of blacks was that -- it was something complimentary too, like they ran really fast.

STU: Like they ran really fast. That doesn't make it right obviously.

PAT: Tried to put forward some reason why they seemed to run faster or whatever. He got fired for it.

JEFFY: Right.

PAT: We never heard from him again, and then he died. That was it.

JEFFY: No. Then it was over. Yeah, he was professional gambler. And then, Jimmy who? It was over.

PAT: He was gone.

JEFFY: But the show White People is about a fictional largely white Winchester University, who often rail against the roles they're put in, paving the way to both comedy and conflict in their post racial world.

PAT: Post racial world.

STU: I will say --

PAT: I wish we lived in a post racial world.

JEFFY: Me too.

STU: The issue here is the standard and how it's not applied equally. Not even applied -- not even attempt to apply it at all. I have no problem with a comedy show making fun of these differences and the differences in our cultures. I think that's generally speaking a healthy thing. I mean, you see that from comedians all the time. And there's always these controversies where someone says something that is controversial. And comedians get in trouble for it, and I always side with the comedians.

JEFFY: George Lopez, it just happened to him.

STU: Yeah, it happens -- comedy is supposed to push these buttons. That is point of it. They're trying to put you in an uncomfortable position, to think about something differently. To criticize your own side. To sometimes criticize the other side. That is supposed to be part of it when it comes to comedy. So, I mean, I don't know anything about this show. It is interesting the way this standard is applied. Which you're right. If it was dear black people, and it was teaching lessons to black people who don't understand the real world the way white people do, that would be an issue.

PAT: Oh, man.

STU: However, I could say that same sentence and say, "Well, if it's a story about black people teaching white people about the way of the world, that they don't really understand, that's completely okay."

JEFFY: Completely okay.

STU: And that's just -- just dumb. You should be able in a creative environment to be able to say pretty much anything. I mean, pretty much anything. That is what -- that's -- you get a boring world if you try to apply standards to things like comedy. Just take it out of this weird political context that everything falls into these days. The show starts sucking, right? Look at Saturday Night Live with Barack Obama. They were so terrified.

PAT: Well, they couldn't find anything funny about him.

STU: Yeah.

PAT: He was so perfect. We couldn't find anything to laugh at. The man is so wonderful.

STU: He's so amazingly wonderful. We can't find anything to criticize or make fun of. So what you get is eight years of terrible programming.

PAT: Uh-huh.

STU: You know, now, gosh they -- you can't get A list stars to that show fast enough. Melissa McCarthy is making 20 million a movie. She's showing up on her Saturday nights to do Sean Spicer. Like all of a sudden they can find comedy everywhere.

PAT: Uh-huh.

STU: And it's like -- then you have Alec Baldwin and Melissa McCarthy like, you know, doing like recurring -- not hosting, recurring episodes, where they're like, "Eh, they're in one episode, and then they're out."

PAT: There was a time too, and it wasn't that long ago -- maybe ten years -- where you could get away with certain things because it was comedy. You know, you could make fun of people. You could do accents. You could say certain things. It was a joke. Okay? We were joking. It was parody. It was comedy. It was satire. And you'd be like, "Oh, yeah, okay. Well, I mean, that was kind of distasteful." But people would move on. Now, you lose your career over that. You just lose your career. You're done.

JEFFY: We're not moving on. You don't make fun of it.

PAT: We don't move on.

STU: And you see this sort of thing as it's applied even surprises some of the comedians.

PAT: Yeah.

STU: I remember after Trump was elected, Seth MacFarlane, who is the guy behind Family Guy and Ted and other various projects that you would know from the world of pretty harsh comedy.

PAT: Ted, is that teddy bear thing?

STU: The teddy bear thing with Mark Wahlberg.

PAT: Okay.

STU: Big movie. Made a lot of money. Made a sequel.

PAT: It looks stupid.

JEFFY: It sure does.

PAT: Has anybody seen it? It looks just atrocious.

STU: Oh. The second one was not pretty good. The first one was very funny. Very funny. Yes, I thought so.

PAT: Oh, was it really?

STU: And I like Family Guy a lot. And they take -- I mean, they put things on that show -- it's utterly unbelievable the stuff they get away with, not from just the perspective of it's on. Remember, on Fox. It's not on FX. It's not on HBO. It's on Fox the network. The same place that owns Fox News Channel, which they mock relentlessly on that show. But they make jokes about the handicapped. Jokes about races. Jokes about rape, sexual assault, all sorts of stuff on there.

PAT: Wow.

STU: And they push that envelope so far. If a conservative ever tried to do it, they would be thrown out of society. But because Seth MacFarlane is, A, very talented and, B, very liberal. He somehow skates away with most of this stuff. Even he gets some of it sometimes.

But his complaint after the Trump thing -- obviously, he did not want Donald Trump to win. But his complaint to his liberal friends was, look, people are rejecting this world we've created where everyone gets offend over everything. That's what they're rejecting with this election. And I think he's on to something there.

PAT: Yeah, I think so too.

STU: People are sick of this. They understand that, you know, people can say offensive things and we can all move on with our lives. When someone says something -- this is why I'm never for boycotts. If someone says something you don't like, generally speaking, and I know we don't all agree in every instance of this, but it's like generally speaking we come together --

PAT: And in the exception of Jeffy, certainly we would boycott him.

STU: Well, I would boycott him. I'm against all boycotts except for the Jeffy boycott.

PAT: The Jeffy boycott.

STU: But you just move on with your life. You go on to another show.

PAT: I know.

STU: We talked about this with Simon Sinek yesterday who was in here and talking about social media and how ten to 14-year-old girls have this big spike in suicide rate, which is obviously terrifying. And I don't know how this applies to everyone else. I don't know how you get here. But I can tell you, on social media, the way to defeat being bullied on social media is to not care about it.

And I don't -- we are -- we have this gift.

PAT: That's really hard. When it comes to 14-year-olds.

STU: And it's impossible. And I don't know how to apply it. But I can tell you that being here in this job, you get the gift of being assaulted, of being called Hitler so many times.

PAT: Sure. But we're adults. We're big boys. We can take it, and we can ignore it.

STU: Right. I know. But, I mean, adults don't do this well, Pat. This is not -- it's not an adult thing.

I see this with people all the time, that get their lives turned upside down because someone made a comment that disagrees with them on their Facebook feed.

This happens all the time. We've even seen it in this room from Mr. Glenn Beck many times.

PAT: Yeah.

STU: The only cure for it is to not care. People call me the most genocidal maniac of all time. Adolf Hitler. How many times have we been called that?

PAT: Many.

STU: How many times have we been called every nasty horrible word people can come up with.

It never impacts me because I don't care what you think. I don't care if you think I'm a terrible person. I don't care if you think I voted wrong. I don't care if you think I should -- my opinion on red velvet Chips Ahoy cookies is incorrect, which, by the way, is not, they're delicious -- I don't care about anything you're saying when it comes to calling me names. It doesn't impact me because I think we've been so saturated with it because of the business we're in, that we just are able to just toss it off to the side. Most people are not. Most people, you know, get a comment that is distasteful, and it eats them up the whole day.

And I think maybe because we're developing a whole new society here based on social media and outward angry criticism, constantly flowing, maybe at some point, the saturation hits everybody and nobody cares about this stuff anymore. But until then, it's going to be hard for people to deal with

PAT: Yeah, this discussion began with the Dear White People show that's moving to Netflix.

STU: Yeah.

PAT: This is original programming. And I can't -- it seems like we spent some time talking about the dear white people thing on Pat and Stu a while ago. Do you remember this? And I think this all began with some -- I don't know -- just a clip or a trailer of somebody. And then it developed into a movie. And now it's a Netflix phenomenon. But here's the trailer that they've developed for this soon to be Netflix story.

VOICE: Dear white people, here's a list of acceptable Halloween costumes: Pirate, slutty nurse, any of our first 43 presidents. Top of the list of unacceptable costumes: Me.

PAT: She's black.

VOICE: Wow.

PAT: So you can't look like her.

JEFFY: No.

PAT: Nor can you look like the 44th president, Barack Obama. You can look like any of the others. How do you -- how did we get there to that standard?

STU: Would she be able to dress up as Richard Nixon?

PAT: Yes.

STU: Yes, right?

PAT: I mean, the answer is yes.

JEFFY: Yeah, yeah.

STU: The answer is yes under this standard. It's bizarre.

PAT: It is.

STU: I mean, look, I have no interest in going out on Halloween as a black person in the year 2017. No interest at all.

PAT: Still, this culture appropriation stuff is silly.

STU: And this goes back to -- who was it back in the day? It was Ted Danson, famously came out -- remember? With Blackface. And he was very liberal, obviously. So it didn't ruin his career.

JEFFY: Yeah, they even tried to cover him up because Whoopi said she told him to do it.

STU: Yeah, they tried to cover it. Every once in a while, you see something like this. Most people know that these lines kind of inherently -- that doesn't mean you can't say how ridiculous they are. I have no interest in mixing that up. But it is a weird thing.

PAT: It really is.

STU: We see it all the time. I mean, weren't pirates people too?

PAT: Yes.

STU: If you want to talk about the pirates of today, if you wanted to be a pirate today, the most logical costume you would dress up is as a Somali pirate, which would be completely off-limits.

PAT: Right. Off-limits. You can't do that.

And she was saying that being a slutty anything is okay for white girls.

JEFFY: Yeah.

PAT: You go ahead and act like a slut, and that's fine because that's your area.

STU: That's you.

PAT: That's you. That's your culture. You are sluts.

(laughter)

PAT: Is that what that is? That's pretty weird. Pretty weird.

[break]

A Sharia enclave is quietly taking root in America. It's time to wake up.

NOVA SAFO / Staff | Getty Images

Sharia-based projects like the Meadow in Texas show how political Islam grows quietly, counting on Americans to stay silent while an incompatible legal system takes root.

Apolitical system completely incompatible with the Constitution is gaining ground in the United States, and we are pretending it is not happening.

Sharia — the legal and political framework of Islam — is being woven into developments, institutions, and neighborhoods, including a massive project in Texas. And the consequences will be enormous if we continue to look the other way.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

Before we can have an honest debate, we’d better understand what Sharia represents. Sharia is not simply a set of religious rules about prayer or diet. It is a comprehensive legal and political structure that governs marriage, finance, criminal penalties, and civic life. It is a parallel system that claims supremacy wherever it takes hold.

This is where the distinction matters. Many Muslims in America want nothing to do with Sharia governance. They came here precisely because they lived under it. But political Islam — the movement that seeks to implement Sharia as law — is not the same as personal religious belief.

It is a political ideology with global ambitions, much like communism. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently warned that Islamist movements do not seek peaceful coexistence with the West. They seek dominance. History backs him up.

How Sharia arrives

Political Islam does not begin with dramatic declarations. It starts quietly, through enclaves that operate by their own rules. That is why the development once called EPIC City — now rebranded as the Meadow — is so concerning. Early plans framed it as a Muslim-only community built around a mega-mosque and governed by Sharia-compliant financing. After state investigations were conducted, the branding changed, but the underlying intent remained the same.

Developers have openly described practices designed to keep non-Muslims out, using fees and ownership structures to create de facto religious exclusivity. This is not assimilation. It is the construction of a parallel society within a constitutional republic.

The warning from those who have lived under it

Years ago, local imams in Texas told me, without hesitation, that certain Sharia punishments “just work.” They spoke about cutting off hands for theft, stoning adulterers, and maintaining separate standards of testimony for men and women. They insisted it was logical and effective while insisting they would never attempt to implement it in Texas.

But when pressed, they could not explain why a system they consider divinely mandated would suddenly stop applying once someone crossed a border.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

AASHISH KIPHAYET / Contributor | Getty Images

America is vulnerable

Europe is already showing us where this road leads. No-go zones, parallel courts, political intimidation, and clerics preaching supremacy have taken root across major cities.

America’s strength has always come from its melting pot, but assimilation requires boundaries. It requires insisting that the Constitution, not religious law, is the supreme authority on this soil.

Yet we are becoming complacent, even fearful, about saying so. We mistake silence for tolerance. We mistake avoidance for fairness. Meanwhile, political Islam views this hesitation as weakness.

Religious freedom is one of America’s greatest gifts. Muslims may worship freely here, as they should. But political Islam must not be permitted to plant a flag on American soil. The Constitution cannot coexist with a system that denies equal rights, restricts speech, subordinates women, and places clerical authority above civil law.

Wake up before it is too late

Projects like the Meadow are not isolated. They are test runs, footholds, proofs of concept. Political Islam operates with patience. It advances through demographic growth, legal ambiguity, and cultural hesitation — and it counts on Americans being too polite, too distracted, or too afraid to confront it.

We cannot afford that luxury. If we fail to defend the principles that make this country free, we will one day find ourselves asking how a parallel system gained power right in front of us. The answer will be simple: We looked away.

The time to draw boundaries and to speak honestly is now. The time to defend the Constitution as the supreme law of the land is now. Act while there is still time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

The Crisis of Meaning: Searching for truth and purpose

Mario Tama / Staff | Getty Images

Anxiety, anger, and chronic dissatisfaction signal a country searching for meaning. Without truth and purpose, politics becomes a dangerous substitute for identity.

We have built a world overflowing with noise, convenience, and endless choice, yet something essential has slipped out of reach. You can sense it in the restless mood of the country, the anxiety among young people who cannot explain why they feel empty, in the angry confusion that dominates our politics.

We have more wealth than any nation in history, but the heart of the culture feels strangely malnourished. Before we can debate debt or elections, we must confront the reality that we created a world of things, but not a world of purpose.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

What we are living through is not just economic or political dysfunction. It is the vacuum that appears when a civilization mistakes abundance for meaning.

Modern life is stuffed with everything except what the human soul actually needs. We built systems to make life faster, easier, and more efficient — and then wondered why those systems cannot teach our children who they are, why they matter, or what is worth living for.

We tell the next generation to chase success, influence, and wealth, turning childhood into branding. We ask kids what they want to do, not who they want to be. We build a world wired for dopamine rather than dignity, and then we wonder why so many people feel unmoored.

When everything is curated, optimized, and delivered at the push of a button, the question “what is my life for?” gets lost in the static.

The crisis beneath the headlines

It is not just the young who feel this crisis. Every part of our society is straining under the weight of meaninglessness.

Look at the debt cycle — the mathematical fate no civilization has ever escaped once it crosses a threshold that we seem to have already blown by. While ordinary families feel the pressure, our leaders respond with distraction, with denial, or by rewriting the very history that could have warned us.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

We have entered a cultural moment where the noise is so loud that it drowns out the simplest truths. We are living in a country that no longer knows how to hear itself think.

So people go searching. Some drift toward the false promise of socialism, some toward the empty thrill of rebellion. Some simply check out. When a culture forgets what gives life meaning, it becomes vulnerable to every ideology that offers a quick answer.

The quiet return of meaning

And yet, quietly, something else is happening. Beneath the frustration and cynicism, many Americans are recognizing that meaning does not come from what we own, but from what we honor. It does not rise from success, but from virtue. It does not emerge from noise, but from the small, sacred things that modern life has pushed to the margins — the home, the table, the duty you fulfill, the person you help when no one is watching.

The danger is assuming that this rediscovery happens on its own. It does not.

Reorientation requires intention. It requires rebuilding the habits and virtues that once held us together. It requires telling the truth about our history instead of rewriting it to fit today’s narratives. And it requires acknowledging what has been erased: that meaning is inseparable from God’s presence in a nation’s life.

Harold M. Lambert / Contributor | Getty Images

Where renewal begins

We have built a world without stillness, and then we wondered why no one can hear the questions that matter. Those questions remain, whether we acknowledge them or not. They do not disappear just because we drown them in entertainment or noise. They wait for us, and the longer we ignore them, the more disoriented we become.

Meaning is still available. It is found in rebuilding the smallest, most human spaces — the places that cannot be digitized, globalized, or automated. The home. The family. The community.

These are the daily virtues that do not trend on social media, but that hold a civilization upright. If we want to repair this country, we begin there, exactly where every durable civilization has always begun: one virtue at a time, one tradition at a time, one generation at a time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

A break in trust: A NEW Watergate is brewing in plain sight

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

When institutions betray the public’s trust, the country splits, and the spiral is hard to stop.

Something drastic is happening in American life. Headlines that should leave us stunned barely register anymore. Stories that once would have united the country instead dissolve into silence or shrugs.

It is not apathy exactly. It is something deeper — a growing belief that the people in charge either cannot or will not fix what is broken.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf.

I call this response the Bubba effect. It describes what happens when institutions lose so much public trust that “Bubba,” the average American minding his own business, finally throws his hands up and says, “Fine. I will handle it myself.” Not because he wants to, but because the system that was supposed to protect him now feels indifferent, corrupt, or openly hostile.

The Bubba effect is not a political movement. It is a survival instinct.

What triggers the Bubba effect

We are watching the triggers unfold in real time. When members of Congress publicly encourage active duty troops to disregard orders from the commander in chief, that is not a political squabble. When a federal judge quietly rewrites the rules so one branch of government can secretly surveil another, that is not normal. That is how republics fall. Yet these stories glided across the news cycle without urgency, without consequence, without explanation.

When the American people see the leadership class shrug, they conclude — correctly — that no one is steering the ship.

This is how the Bubba effect spreads. It is not just individuals resisting authority. It is sheriffs refusing to enforce new policies, school boards ignoring state mandates, entire communities saying, “We do not believe you anymore.” It becomes institutional, cultural, national.

A country cracking from the inside

This effect can be seen in Dearborn, Michigan. In the rise of fringe voices like Nick Fuentes. In the Epstein scandal, where powerful people could not seem to locate a single accountable adult. These stories are different in content but identical in message: The system protects itself, not you.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf. That does not mean they suddenly agree with everything that person says. It means they feel abandoned by the institutions that were supposed to be trustworthy.

The Bubba effect is what fills that vacuum.

The dangers of a faithless system

A republic cannot survive without credibility. Congress cannot oversee intelligence agencies if it refuses to discipline its own members. The military cannot remain apolitical if its chain of command becomes optional. The judiciary cannot defend the Constitution while inventing loopholes that erase the separation of powers.

History shows that once a nation militarizes politics, normalizes constitutional shortcuts, or allows government agencies to operate without scrutiny, it does not return to equilibrium peacefully. Something will give.

The question is what — and when.

The responsibility now belongs to us

In a healthy country, this is where the media steps in. This is where universities, pastors, journalists, and cultural leaders pause the outrage machine and explain what is at stake. But today, too many see themselves not as guardians of the republic, but of ideology. Their first loyalty is to narrative, not truth.

The founders never trusted the press more than the public. They trusted citizens who understood their rights, lived their responsibilities, and demanded accountability. That is the antidote to the Bubba effect — not rage, but citizenship.

How to respond without breaking ourselves

Do not riot. Do not withdraw. Do not cheer on destruction just because you dislike the target. That is how nations lose themselves. Instead, demand transparency. Call your representatives. Insist on consequences. Refuse to normalize constitutional violations simply because “everyone does it.” If you expect nothing, you will get nothing.

Do not hand your voice to the loudest warrior simply because he is swinging a bat at the establishment. You do not beat corruption by joining a different version of it. You beat it by modeling the country you want to preserve: principled, accountable, rooted in truth.

Adam Gray / Stringer | Getty Images

Every republic reaches a moment when historians will later say, “That was the warning.” We are living in ours. But warnings are gifts if they are recognized. Institutions bend. People fail. The Constitution can recover — if enough Americans still know and cherish it.

It does not take a majority. Twenty percent of the country — awake, educated, and courageous — can reset the system. It has happened before. It can happen again.

Wake up. Stand up. Demand integrity — from leaders, from institutions, and from yourself. Because the Bubba effect will not end until Americans reclaim the duty that has always belonged to them: preserving the republic for the next generation.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Warning: Stop letting TikTok activists think for you

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Bad-faith attacks on Israel and AIPAC warp every debate. Real answers emerge only when people set aside scripts and ask what serves America’s long-term interests.

The search for truth has always required something very much in short supply these days: honesty. Not performative questions, not scripted outrage, not whatever happens to be trending on TikTok, but real curiosity.

Some issues, often focused on foreign aid, AIPAC, or Israel, have become hotbeds of debate and disagreement. Before we jump into those debates, however, we must return to a simpler, more important issue: honest questioning. Without it, nothing in these debates matters.

Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

The phrase “just asking questions” has re-entered the zeitgeist, and that’s fine. We should always question power. But too many of those questions feel preloaded with someone else’s answer. If the goal is truth, then the questions should come from a sincere desire to understand, not from a hunt for a villain.

Honest desire for truth is the only foundation that can support a real conversation about these issues.

Truth-seeking is real work

Right now, plenty of people are not seeking the truth at all. They are repeating something they heard from a politician on cable news or from a stranger on TikTok who has never opened a history book. That is not a search for answers. That is simply outsourcing your own thought.

If you want the truth, you need to work for it. You cannot treat the world like a Marvel movie where the good guy appears in a cape and the villain hisses on command. Real life does not give you a neat script with the moral wrapped up in two hours.

But that is how people are approaching politics now. They want the oppressed and the oppressor, the heroic underdog and the cartoon villain. They embrace this fantastical framing because it is easier than wrestling with reality.

This framing took root in the 1960s when the left rebuilt its worldview around colonizers and the colonized. Overnight, Zionism was recast as imperialism. Suddenly, every conflict had to fit the same script. Today’s young activists are just recycling the same narrative with updated graphics. Everything becomes a morality play. No nuance, no context, just the comforting clarity of heroes and villains.

Bad-faith questions

This same mindset is fueling the sudden obsession with Israel, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in particular. You hear it from members of Congress and activists alike: AIPAC pulls the strings, AIPAC controls the government, AIPAC should register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The questions are dramatic, but are they being asked in good faith?

FARA is clear. The standard is whether an individual or group acts under the direction or control of a foreign government. AIPAC simply does not qualify.

Here is a detail conveniently left out of these arguments: Dozens of domestic organizations — Armenian, Cuban, Irish, Turkish — lobby Congress on behalf of other countries. None of them registers under FARA because — like AIPAC — they are independent, domestic organizations.

If someone has a sincere problem with the structure of foreign lobbying, fair enough. Let us have that conversation. But singling out AIPAC alone is not a search for truth. It is bias dressed up as bravery.

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

If someone wants to question foreign aid to Israel, fine. Let’s have that debate. But let’s ask the right questions. The issue is not the size of the package but whether the aid advances our interests. What does the United States gain? Does the investment strengthen our position in the region? How does it compare to what we give other nations? And do we examine those countries with the same intensity?

The real target

These questions reflect good-faith scrutiny. But narrowing the entire argument to one country or one dollar amount misses the larger problem. If someone objects to the way America handles foreign aid, the target is not Israel. The target is the system itself — an entrenched bureaucracy, poor transparency, and decades-old commitments that have never been re-examined. Those problems run through programs around the world.

If you want answers, you need to broaden the lens. You have to be willing to put aside the movie script and confront reality. You have to hold yourself to a simple rule: Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

That is the only way this country ever gets clarity on foreign aid, influence, alliances, and our place in the world. Questioning is not just allowed. It is essential. But only if it is honest.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.